Hello and welcome to this day in Esoter political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, October 5, 1987, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Robert H. Bork's Supreme Court nomination to the Senate floor with a recommendation that he be rejected.

Earlier that summer, President Reagan had nominated Borg for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court

to replace retiring Associate Justice Lewis Powell. Throughout the summer there was

mounting opposition to Borgork's nomination from

moderates and liberals mostly concerned about his civil rights opinions we

will get into all this stuff but the nomination proceeded even though it seemed in

many ways doomed from the start.

Eventually, Bork's nomination hearings would become a major political media event.

Tons of advertising and lobbying and nastiness and swirling stories, he would be voted down.

Republicans would cry foul. And if anyone kind of knows his name

now it's because he has become a verb, a boorking which is basically mounting a

major opposition to a judicial candidate.

That seems par for the course right now, but it is important to remember a moment at which

that felt like new and interesting and changed the game a little bit.

And so that is really in many ways what we're here to discuss

the nomination of Bork, but also the legacy of how that played out.

Here to do that, as always are Nicole Hemmer of Columbia

and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello there.

Hello Jody.

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